Muck You Very Much

Instead of draining the swamp,Trump might be the best thing that’s happened to lobbyists since expense accounts.

- Emily Cadei

Al Mottur admits to not only counting his chickens before they had hatched but also putting out all the fixings for a Sunday picnic fried chicken feast.

The veteran Democratic lobbyist went into Election Day assuming Hillary Clinton would be America’s 45th president, and as a member of Clinton’s national finance committee who helped raise more than $1 million for her campaign, that would have been a victory not just for his party but also for his bottom line. “I was thinking, This is going to be great for my firm,” recalls Mottur, a senior partner at D.C. lobbying powerhouse Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck, which represents such companies as Anheuser-Busch, FedEx and Comcast.

As it did for so many others, the election results stunned Mottur; Donald Trump’s victory left him deeply disappointed, personally. Professionally, however, he quickly surmised that his company would be just fine. Several well-connected Republican lobbyists on the team were involved with the Trump campaign, his White House transition team or both, Mottur notes, “so we’ve just been switching our marketing emphasis.”